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Budget Video Cards for Causual Gaming under $60?

A

ambience713

Junior Member
Hi. I currently have MSI K7N2 Nforce2 motherboard with onboard GEFORCE2 (I think??) video card. I have Duron 1.6 OC'd to 1.8, with 512 DDR RAM running in Dual Channel.

However, I noticed that my computer is slow for Everquest and Command and Conquer General, and found a couple of refurbished deals from Newegg.com

I purchased two video cards on an impulse...
1. ATI Leadtech RADEON 8500LE 64MB DDR $50.00
2. VGA ATI Shaphire RADEON 9000PRO 128M DVI $54.75

I will probably sell one on Ebay or return it.

I guess my question is... Are these video cards for the money? Should I spend more money for a better graphics card? I am not into FPS, but could use some Battlefied. I've done a couple of hours reading in this forum and various review sites... but I am still very much confused. I also heard good things about Nvidia TI420. Thanks.
 
I also have a K7N2G, the onboard GPU is the equivalent of a GeForce4. I'd sell them both and take the $105 bux back to New Egg and pick up a NEW Sapphire 9600 for $107
 
How much better is Sapphire 9600? Honestly, I would hate to spent $100+ for a video card. Maybe I am not a geek enough, but every single item on my Nforce2 computer is built from using cheap or refurbished parts! (motherboard for $35, 2X 256 Kinsgton for $10 each, $10 CDRW, $40 for 120gig WD HD, etc).

How come video cards are so expensive!

Anyways, if you had only $50's, what would be your video card choice?

Thanks.
 
get the 8500le its the best deal you can get for $50 unless you get a used geforce 4 4200 or any other faster card used for cheaper. 9600 isn't worth it because even though it is faster with AA/AF it is still so slow that you'll never utilize those quality features.

 
The onboard GF4 is the MX. It uses shared system memory, taking away a sizable chunk if you can enable it to 128MB, and only running 300MHz (your DDR motherboard speeds). Both cards should give you a nice improvement, great for casual gaming. They are close to equal in performance, tweak and overclock both, see which is better and then sell the unwanted one.
 
Thanks everyone for your advices! I might actually keep both, because I got the Soyo motherboard for free (found though Hot Deals here in AT), and all I need is another Duron for a complete system.
 
Update on this:
I received both cards from NewEgg.com yesterday. I tested out and both turned out to be semi-defective.

AtI 9000, after installing the latest drivers from ATI.com, I was tested out using 3dmarks. I noticed a flicker in about 1/5 of the screen..like .5 second. Also, this happends whenever I am moving my a window (like IE window) around the desktop. This sort of reminded me of my Pentium 90 video card when I used unaccelerated XF86 in Linux.

Next, disappointed, I tested 8500LE. My computer boots (MSI k7n2G Nforce2) fine with the card. But whenever I tried to install the video card, my screen goes kabut...blank. Rebooting the computer doesn't fix restore the screen. Only way to get my screen visible was 1. just use onboard video card 2. put semi-defective ATI 9000 card and boot back to Windows XP.. . this somehow restored the screen. This and other (about 20 minutes of trouble shooting), I decided it wasn't worth my time, and returned the video cards.

One positive note: Newegg.com was good about RMA'ing the video cards. I think I will think twice before buying another Newegg.com refurbished products (though people posted they've gotten good deals in the past).

I am instead getting a Visiontech 9100 from www.shentech.com for about $41 shipped. Thanks Fatwallet.com/forums!!!

Thanks.
 
Buy a Geforce FX5200-as it will be OK with some games that take adavantage of or use Direct X and it's about AUD$99 where I live, on the 'Gold Coast', Queensland Australia. And I bought a Jetway FX5200 at a store at Ashmore for three reasons-a) the price, b) suits me well-I play FS2004, The Sims,LOTR-Fellowship of the Ring, CFS 1,2,3,Links 2003, Age of Mythology and Rise of Nations and Simcity 4, has 128MB of memory and sports DVI,TV-out and also AGP 4x compatible, also it is the same brand as my P4 mobo.

Here's the website of the store where I bought it from

IT MegaMart
My specs-from next weekend :
Pentium 4 Northword C1 Stepping 2.40GHz
Jetway 845GDML Mobo-O/B LAN-Realtek, CMedia CMI8738 Audio (Xear3D, Direct Sound,EAX 2.0), AGP 4x, AwardBios 6.0PG
256MB PC2100 DDR RAM
Samsung SV1021H 10GB ATA/100 HD
JLMS (Lite-On) 16x DVD, LG CED8080B 8X4X32 CD-RW
Jetway FX5200 (was previously using Inte's 82845G Graphics Controller)
HP Deskjet 3550
Philips 107S 17" Monitor
Windows XP Pro, SP1
Babya Photo Workshop, Corel Draw Essentials 2, MS Office XP, Works,Encarta, FrontPage
 
Careful with the FX5200 - many of the cheaper ones are just as RAM bandwidth castrated as the ATi "SE" suffix cards, having only half as many RAM chips on as their full performance siblings.
 
I don't think there's a single "decent" gaming card out there for below $60 these days. At least not brand new anyway. You can consider a used ti4200 or R8500 maybe. I recently picked up another used 128mb R8500 (non-LE) off ebay for about $52. Good performing card for most of today's current games.
 
Originally posted by: ambience713
Update on this:
I received both cards from NewEgg.com yesterday. I tested out and both turned out to be semi-defective.

AtI 9000, after installing the latest drivers from ATI.com, I was tested out using 3dmarks. I noticed a flicker in about 1/5 of the screen..like .5 second. Also, this happends whenever I am moving my a window (like IE window) around the desktop. This sort of reminded me of my Pentium 90 video card when I used unaccelerated XF86 in Linux.

Next, disappointed, I tested 8500LE. My computer boots (MSI k7n2G Nforce2) fine with the card. But whenever I tried to install the video card, my screen goes kabut...blank. Rebooting the computer doesn't fix restore the screen. Only way to get my screen visible was 1. just use onboard video card 2. put semi-defective ATI 9000 card and boot back to Windows XP.. . this somehow restored the screen. This and other (about 20 minutes of trouble shooting), I decided it wasn't worth my time, and returned the video cards.

One positive note: Newegg.com was good about RMA'ing the video cards. I think I will think twice before buying another Newegg.com refurbished products (though people posted they've gotten good deals in the past).

I am instead getting a Visiontech 9100 from www.shentech.com for about $41 shipped. Thanks Fatwallet.com/forums!!!

Thanks.
Click to expand...


Make sure you completely removed the Nvidia drivers first. There is a chance that the hardware problem was caused by a software conflict. If so, you are likely to experience similar problems with the 9100.
 
Originally posted by: tenoc
The 8500le may be a little slower than the 8500 in this comparison.

But, then the 9000pro is a lot slower.
Click to expand...

9000P is on par with a 250/250MHz 8500LE, except in the odd game (like BF1942) that favors the 8500LE's 4x2 architecture over the 9000P's 4x1. I'd have stayed with the 9000P for the extra memory (I wouldn't buy less than 128MB) and the ability to drive dual CRTs.
 
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